


I learned how to love and I learned how to lie

by tigriswolf



Series: comment_fic drabbles [85]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Backstory, Child Abuse, Dark, Future Fic, Gen, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Not Thor: The Dark World Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-22
Updated: 2012-07-22
Packaged: 2017-11-10 11:20:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/465689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/pseuds/tigriswolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He won't say Loki opened his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I learned how to love and I learned how to lie

**Author's Note:**

> Title: I learned how to love and I learned how to lie  
> Disclaimer: not my characters  
> Warnings: mentions of child abuse; possibly AU backstory for Clint; a darkish characterization for Clint  
> Pairings: Loki/Clint  
> Rating: PG  
> Wordcount: 740  
> Point of view: third  
> Prompt: author's choice, author's choice, Nice just gets you lonely or dead. I don't like those options.

Clint Barton was a quiet child with watchful, wary eyes. He hid a lot. He kept his mouth shut and he watched, and he learned. 

When his parents died and his brother took his hand and whispered _we have to run or we'll never see each other again, Clint, c'mon, please come with me_ , Clint followed him into the night.

Barney got them into the circus. It was just somewhere else to keep his head down, and it reinforced his lesson that ducking only leads to harsher beatings. But in the circus, Clint wasn’t useless – Duquesne and Buck taught him, and he became a headliner, and it was better, everything was so much better… 

But Barney wasn’t as good, and didn’t learn as well, and Clint just couldn’t duck. And Duquesne turned on him, and Buck, and when Barney left this time, he didn’t take Clint’s hand and ask him to come.

Clint Barton spent a month in the hospital, silent and still. He thought about letting himself fade away. He thought about all the lessons he’d learned.

He thought about how the bow sang to him, how arrows obeyed him. He thought about doing the right thing, about doing the easy thing, about rolling over and dying, and then he thought, _Fuck that noise, I’ll go out with a bang if I go at all._

So Clint Barton enlisted when he got out of the hospital and honed his marksman ability to beyond impossible, and he started talking. He talked a _lot_. Because being silent and keeping his head down got him nowhere. He still learned – the greatest lesson was how much more fun it was shoot a living thing than a static target. That… probably wasn’t the lesson he was supposed to get, but he learned it pretty goddamned well, anyway.

When the army turned like everyone else he’d ever known, Clint took his bow and his quiver, and flushed his morals down the toilet. He figured Duquesne and Buck would get a kick out of him becoming a killer-for-hire, but he didn’t let that stop him. 

And then SHIELD happened. SHIELD, trying to keep the world safe as the bad guys got ever badder, and the weapons other-worldly, and Clint kept on snarking, and killing whoever he was told to kill, and turning world-class assassins to the side of the angels (which, yeah… there’s so much irony there, and probably only three people in the world have the clearance to see it).

He won’t say Loki opened his eyes. His eyes have been open since he was three years old and broke his first bone (his first bone was broken). No, Loki didn’t open his eyes. 

But Loki did show him how goddamned bored he’d become. And when Fury told them to lay low in the aftermath of Manhattan, maybe Tasha could guess what would happen, but she was off somewhere else, and Clint didn’t linger to say goodbye. 

He’d been watching. He’d learned a lot. 

And when Loki came back (which he would, of course he would, all he wanted was Thor’s attention, and Thor had chosen Earth), well. Loki was the first new thing in a long time. 

Clint left everything SHIELD gave him behind and vanished in the middle of the day. He’d lay low for awhile, until Thor’s pissed off little brother came back to break his brother’s newest toys. 

It was time to be quiet again, to hide, to be watchful and wary. To keep his head down and wait for the right moment. 

He could do that. It was the first lesson he’d ever learned, staring up at his father and choking on tears. It was the basis for everything else. 

_Stand still, close your eyes, survive._

So Clint went to ground, watched the news – and waited. 

He didn’t wait for long, and he laughed when Loki appeared in his kitchen, and he made the mad god a pot of tea, and he smiled while Loki stared at him, all gobsmacked and righteous indignation.

And maybe it was ‘wrong,’ whatever the fuck wrong was. But it was the most fun he’d had since his first taste of killing. 

_If this is a trick_ , Loki said, all cold and remote. Dangerous. The most dangerous thing Clint had ever touched. 

_It’s not_ , Clint assured him, and for the moment, that was true. 

All Clint could promise was the moment, and Loki nodded, and that was that.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] I learned how to love and I learned how to lie](https://archiveofourown.org/works/931696) by [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins), [tigriswolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/pseuds/tigriswolf)




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